[fic notes & playlist] simulation swarm

[younglegends]

SIMULATION SWARM: 3,456 words (hehe very pleased with that number), op reijufic, non-linear narrative

HUMMINGBIRD BOMB: reiju playlist

tracklist:

1. LOYAL FOR / sleigh bells

atomic deals fall like a waterfall over us all
atomic deals fall like a waterfall over us all

i'm loyal for, i'm loyal for now

2. GLASS CEILING / metric

only do what i'm told, only do what i'm told
last to leave, cold calling
you're gonna lose your arms, amputate plasticine
there's no knight in silver armor shining

3. CRUEL / st. vincent

bodies, can't you see what everybody wants from you?

4. AS FAR AS I CAN SEE / phantogram

as far as i can see
nobody loves me
as far as i can tell
nobody loves you either

5. FISH / wye oak

they who made you, they made me too
quiet like you, violent like you
i see you there, wild in my dreams
when you return, go to the sea

6. HUMMINGBIRD BOMB / sleigh bells

i'm a hummingbird bomb just moving along
at the speed of sound with a target in mind

7. SIMULATION SWARM / big thief

i'd fly to you tomorrow, i'm not fighting in this war
i wanna drop my arms and take your arms
and walk you to the shore

the song

I remember building an energy shield 
In your room, like a temple
Swallows in the windless field
Very thin, with your mother
Tall as a pale green tree
Very wild, bright as winter
Rising with a prism key
And a child to deliver
Taken with the blood and vine
As the first little angel

like... guys. um. are u seeing this? the WHOLE FREAKING SONG u guys. anyway o my stars winged creatures / gathering in silken night / like the last human teachers very much running through me in writing the opening of this fic. 

the concept

what can i say reiju slays and i always knew id write something for her after watching wci. what struck me the most, i think, is after she pushes sanji to his freedom for the second time, and then returns to the hell of the battlefield because she knows it's hers, she belongs there and nowhere else, it's crazy. and everything about this fic stemmed from the weight of that one scene i think. 

anyway idk something so unbearable about saving someone else who deserves to be saved over yourself. like, it's not self-sacrifice, nothing so altruistic as that, in fact there's even something selfish about it, giving in to something almost indulgent, being able to put everything else aside and save somebody is a luxury in that way. getting to do that with your worthless little life, even just once, when you've caused so much death and suffering otherwise. anyway love and pity and jealousy and gratitude, or whatever. 

also ngl i thought of sanji making something for reiju to eat and fucking exploded

the process

hardest fucking fic everrr like it actually fascinated me how difficult i found writing this when it's totally up my alley of things i normally write, aka vague non-linear character studies... the process really was so much writing and then deleting everything i wrote again because i realized trying to explain anything made it worse!! like idk it really just is what it is. 

dump of deleted parts, aka: why are you explaining things? you shouldn't be. you're doing too much and it's bad etc. 

drop of drawn blood, austere, cradle

A fair imitation of the solemn-eyed paintings or carvings in marble relief that hung in their hallways.

not every comparative quality could be calculated. Some eluded the precision of the scale

The rooftops like snow-capped hills. The fullness of the moon. The sky everywhere, cold against her teeth, numbing her face, the night so wide she thought it must last forever. She laughed; it burned her lungs, it hurt. So this was it. A single moment, in the end. She could cradle its lightness in her palm and it would still be worth all the rest of it, everything.

When she raised her head to search for the closed window of the room that belonged to her father, she saw only the moon reflected there. The watchful white eye in the glass. She wondered if Sanji saw it too, from wherever he was. Wherever he was going.

What she told no one and what no one ever knew was how long she stayed after. After the ship had sailed and the tide washed away the small stumbling footsteps in the sand and there was nothing left to look at but the sea. So she looked at it until her eyes burned, until the moon made white the waves that struck the shore and the fog leached all the colour from the air like the night wasn’t even real, or like it was the only thing that had ever been real. Until she knew she wouldn’t get away with any of it, and then she might as well stay longer anyway.


Reiju joined the others without a backwards glance at the pages fluttering at their feet. It was only a cheap story, only a name. That she had stumbled at all was proof she was still being tested: not the strength nor strategy of violence but the other thing, the face that flinched away. As if it had been struck; as if it could hurt.

It wasn’t so bad—the test. It couldn’t prevent failure, only alerted her to it so she could protect herself accordingly. It was the only way knew there was still something left to protect at all. One day there wouldn’t be, but by then it wouldn’t matter. On that day she’d earn at last the freedom she envied and pitied of her brothers in equal measure.

Until then—until then. Until then she followed them home.


They both looked out at the shore, the sea beyond it. The certainty of the waves lapping at the shore, the shimmer of the moon reflected in the sea. The fog shrouded the night in silk, so thick that she could almost reach out and touch it. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Go,” she said; go and never come back, don’t even turn around to look back at me, don’t you dare. Don’t remember any of it. Forget it all, forget me, and we’ll forget you too, I’ll forget you, I promise, I promise. And there won’t be anything to lay claim to anymore, and you’ll be free.

fave parts

• probably reiju & sanji's conversation/confrontation on the parapet
• the dawn of the wedding: yet again a scene that came to me right away fully formed in its entirety. 
• have i mentioned the idea of reiju getting to eat something sanji made...
• the opening description of the ocean/shore/night and the ending observation of nothing except that it's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. i wanted that to reflect something about how it was sanji who made her notice something beautiful for the first time, what he looks at, and then how it's what she's left with in his loss. how hard she tries to look at it, then. *big thief voice* o my stars...

original brainstorming. 


end

that's it for my list of op fic ideas... guess i go back to my other shit... i would love to write an op fic with a plot someday. yknow something with a fun concept like time travel or amnesia or multiple universes that everyone writes for op all the time, but idk how realistic that is. anyway pls look at my half-delirious brainstorming for a sanji fic that i am never gonna write